Story of tragic romance highlights plight of relatives coping with dementia patients

The Peahen's Flutter by George John

Published:08:00Saturday 16 January 2016

A retired surgeon from Great Denham has penned his first novel highlighting the plight of relatives coping with dementia sufferers.

George John tells a story of tragic romance in The Peahen’s Flutter and he dedicates it to “the hundreds of thousands of relatives, nurses and other healthcare workers who look after patients with Alzheimer’s disease day and night under challenging circumstances”.

Christopher Hall is devastated when his beloved wife of more than 40 years doesn’t recognise him and their children, Adam and Meryl. Adding insult to injury, she develops a romantic relationship with Joseph Connolly, a resident in the Good Hope Nursing Home where she is being cared for.

The families involved are faced with the question “when do the rights of those who lose their faculties end and the wilful gratification of the relatives takes over?”

George tells a captivating story in a simple and endearing narrative style. The incident at the traffic lights, the goings on in the mysterious ‘green room’, the plot of a conniving, greedy, ex-girlfriend, the opportunism of a scheming ‘home-help’ and the woeful consequences of Ketamine drug abuse set the stage for a climax that is as dramatic as it is unexpected.

Dr George John was born in 1948. He graduated from Trivandrum Medical School in Kerala, India and did all his higher surgical training in England. After obtaining the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons and the post–fellowship Diploma in Urology, he worked in the NHS for over 33 years, retiring in 2013.

Last year he published a collection of short stories, Your Lives In Our Hands, based on true incidents he had come across when he was a surgical trainee.

The Peahen’s Flutter is available from Amazon as a Kindle e-book or a paperback edition. It is also available in Kobo store and as an e-pub version in i-Tunes and other outlets.